Magic: the Gathering's legendary casual format, Commander,
got a huge boost this month with the release of five new decks full of multiplayer
shenanigans. This guide to Commander will help you get started and find the right
deck to destroy your friends in the most horribly fun way possible.

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Whenever I post Magic: the Gathering articles, a lot of the
commenters lament not being able to play because it costs too much or it's too
hard to keep up with new releases. I totally feel your pain (I've stopped
playing in tournaments for similar reasons). But there are tons of fun ways to
play Magic with your friends without emptying your checking account, and
Commander is one of the best.

In Commander, each player uses a 100-card deck. You can only
have one copy of a given card (other than basic lands) in your deck, which is
why it's known as a singleton format. In addition, your deck has a Commander –
a single legendary creature who begins play in the "command zone." It can
always be cast from your command zone, and when it dies it goes back to the command zone (although the
cost to cast it increases each time this happens). This means you can build the
rest of your deck to take advantage of the commander's abilities, since you'll
almost always have access to it. Your deck also has to be built from the same
colors as your commander.

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Commander was originally invented by judges who wanted a
low-pressure way to play when they weren't judging tournaments. Back then they
called it Elder Dragon Highlander, or EDH, and you'll still hear players refer
to the format this way. But in 2011, Wizards of the Coast released their first
official Commander product (and changed the name out of fear of trademark
infringement). The Commander rules are still maintained by a committee of fans
– you can read the full rules at their site – there's an
informal overview
of the rules here.

Why is Commander such a good format for casual players?

It's designed as a multiplayer format, perfect
for a group of four or five friends.

Cards never "rotate out" of Commander, so you
don't have to worry about buying new sets or rebuilding your deck with new
cards every three months. You can work on your Commander deck gradually, adding
cards over time and as you can afford them. (Cards are sometimes banned by the
rules committee for being unfun or making games go on too long, but this is
pretty rare).

Commander is supposed to be a low-stakes, fun
format (it's in the committee's official philosophy). It is certainly possible
to spend a ton of money building your deck, but it's equally possible to build
a great, fun deck with inexpensive cards and you'll never feel bad that your
deck couldn't win the big tournament. Because there are no big tournaments.

It tends to be a slow format, so you can play
all those ridiculous huge creatures and spells that cost too much mana to play
in a "serious" Magic game.

Building a 100-card deck around your Commander
of choice is a huge opportunity to show off your creativity and use some of the
weird cards in your collection.

If you'd like to dig a little deeper into Commander
strategy, there are some excellent blogs where players share new deck ideas and
alternate ways to play.

Sheldon Menery also
has a Commander column, this one at StarCityGames.com. Menery is on the
Commander rules committee, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about
the format.

Commander games can get complicated with four or
five players' creatures, artifacts and spells creating a tangled web of weird
interactions. There's an excellent Magic rules judge blog that
posts interesting rules tips a few times each week. They even devoted this week
to some of the new Commander cards.

If you have a burning rules question that needs
answering immediately, Wizards of the Coast maintains a 24/7 live chat (actually an
irc channel), where a qualified MtG judge will answer your question on the
spot. I didn't know about this until we did our playtesting, so I tried it out
this morning, and they answered my question about Price of Knowledge within
about two minutes.

Commander 2013

Now, on to the review of the new decks! Building a Commander
deck from scratch is pretty daunting for new or returning players, which is why
the official Commander decks are so nice. Wizards released the 2013 Commander
decks recently, and while the decks aren't perfect out of the box, they're a
great foundation to start with. They include reprints of classic cards, some
great Commander staples like Sol Ring, and a bunch of brand new, never before
printed cards. Many of the new cards are designed to take advantage of the
quirks of the format (like commanders that get stronger each time you cast them
from the command zone).

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When it came time to review all five decks, there weren't
quite enough review copies to go around. So we turned to our friends at CoolStuffInc.
They hooked us up with the four decks we still needed so we could give them all
a serious test drive. They also sell single cards from the decks, so you can
grab a specific commander if you'd rather build around it yourself. With all
five decks in hand, we sat down with our friends Laura Grace (who is, incidentally,
an amazing cosplayer) and Joe Azzarella for a few games.

Each of the five decks is built around a new commander, but
also includes two other legends in the same colors, so you can use one of them
as the commander instead. A deck will play a little differently depending on
which commander you use, so there's some flexibility to pick the one that suits
your favorite style of play. Each deck also comes with three oversized foil
versions of the three legends. I've frankly never heard anyone express the
slightest bit of interest in these giant cards, and have never seen them used
in a Commander game. During our playtest we decided that some token creatures
cards representing some of the creatures the deck can generate would be much
more desirable. The decks do come with nice deck boxes that are designed to fit
the giant cards.

Eternal Bargain –
White, Blue, Black

Built around Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, this deck strives to
gain tons of life, then spend it on powerful effects like drawing lots of cards
or killing every creature in play. Oloro himself is very powerful while in
play, but he lets you gain life even when he's languishing in the command zone.
Some of the reprints in this deck are particularly interesting, like Brilliant Plan and Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon." These cards originally appeared in a sort
of beginner's set called Portal: Three Kingdoms several years ago. The more
powerful cards in the set have become scarce and expensive, plus this is the
first time they've ever been printed as regular Magic cards (Portal cards
looked a bit different).

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In our playtest, this deck gained a lot of life early, but
that seemed to paint a target on it as other players would attack to keep the
growing life total under control. It also ran out of steam and struggled to
find a way to finish off opponents. It was terribly difficult to kill, though –
just when you thought it was down to its last few life points, it would gain 12
more.

Built around Marath, Will of the Wild, it was a little tough
to see what this deck was trying to accomplish. It clearly wants a lot of mana,
and has a few effects like Cultivate to ramp up your mana production early, but
not as much as you'd expect from a dedicated ramp deck. You can also cheat out
bigger creatures with alternate commander Mayael the Anima. Unfortunately,
there weren't enough really solid targets for either of these strategies. This
deck felt the weakest and least focused of the five. However, it has a lot of
potential if you want to add more huge creatures like Woodfall Primus or Worldspine Worm. Just be aware that adding in Natural Order to get a turn four
(or even turn three) Worldspine is not going to win you many friends at the table, and Commander can
be a very political game.

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Another really fun (and less abusive) option for this deck
is Birthing Pod, which lets you gradually escalate the creatures you have while
searching for just the right threat for any situation. Like all of these decks,
Nature of the Beast would benefit from improving the lands. It's a three color
deck, so gaining access to more versatile lands like Wooded Bastion or Clifftop Retreat will make sure you can cast your spells more consistently.

Power Hungry – Red,
Black, Green

With Prossh, Sky Raider of Kher as Commander, this deck's
goal is easy to discern. It creates a lot of small, disposable creatures, then
sacrifices them for some beneficial effect. Sometimes you can eat your own
creatures to draw cards, but most of the time you'll use them to deal damage to
your opponents. In one of our test games, I was going to lose on my draw step
(thanks to being at 1 life with an opponent's Price of Knowledge in play).
Using a Scarland Thrinax, Stalking Vengeance and a bunch of small creatures, I was able to kill off one opponent
before I died, and if I didn't suck at math, I think I could have won the game.
So the deck has the potential to be explosive and come out of nowhere with huge
plays.

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This deck offers a nice opportunity to play a faster, more
aggressive deck than you usually see in Commander. Adding cards like Madrush Cyclops and Ogre Battledriver will put on the early pressure, while a kicked Goblin Bushwhacker can make all those little kobold and saproling tokens a
genuine threat. Just be prepared to deal with some hate from the other players
when you start bashing away at their life totals. Since you're not playing nice
anyway, you might as well stock a Lavalanche to really punish anyone who tries
to stem your assault.

Mind Seize – Blue,
Black, Red

This is the deck most likely to be out of stock or sold way
above retail price. The reason is that the new cards in the Commander sets are
legal in Magic's competitive "eternal" formats, where players can use almost
any card in Magic's history to build decks. Occasionally the Commander cards
are so good that supply and demand drives the price of the card (and the deck
it's in) way up. Such is the case with Mind Seize, which contains the totally
fair in a multiplayer game but horrendously overpowered in a head-to-head match True-Name Nemesis.

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In any case, this is a really fun Commander deck if you can
get your hands on it. It plays a great political game by allowing everyone at
the table to draw lots of extra cards with things like Temple Bell and Prosperity. Everyone loves drawing cards, so no one will want to kill you or
destroy your awesome card drawing effects. Then, when everyone is feeling fat
and happy with their bulging hands full of cards, you punish them for their
greed with Price of Knowledge or Nekusar, the Mindrazer.

Skyscribing, Braingeyser, and Forced Fruition are good ways
to overflow everyone's hands with a bounty of extra cards. For a win condition
other than Price of Knowledge, you could use Megrim or Liliana's Caress to harm
them when they discard down to seven cards at turn's end. Alternately, you can
focus on commander Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, who exiles cards from libraries
and casts instants or sorceries for free when she attacks. You can't control
what's in your opponent's decks, but you can stack your own deck with great
Jeleva targets. Spells that give you extra turns will seem tempting, but they
can seriously ruin a Commander game for everyone else at the table. Be more
creative than that.

Evasive Maneuvers –
Green, White, Blue

This deck has a really fun theme that's sort of poorly
executed. What it aims to do is "blink" your own creatures in and out of play
to gain extra benefits from effects that trigger when they come into play. Derevi, Emperial Tactician is ok as the commander, but one of the alternate
commanders, Roon of the Hidden Realm, is much better. Roon will let you blink
your Farhaven Elf or Acidic Slime in and out of existence all day.